If Herb's Medicinals in Berthoud shuts its doors, Loveland resident Wayne Williams has alternatives for treating the Lou Gehrig's disease he's battled for nearly six years.

He can extend a trip that's already laborious by driving to a dispensary in Boulder or Denver. He can fill the prescriptions for heavy duty narcotics that he hasn't needed since medicating with marijuana or he can live with what he says is indescribable constant pain.

Williams isn't comfortable with any of those options.

"I'm dying, and if this is something that helps me why can't I take it?" he asked.

While every voter in Colorado will be able to cast a vote related to marijuana in November, residents of Berthoud and Fort Collins will decide the fate of medical marijuana dispensaries in their localities. In Question 301, Fort Collins voters will decide whether to reverse a ban on dispensaries enacted during last year's general election. Berthoud voters will decide whether to initiate a ban of their own that will effectively close the town's only dispensary with ballot Question 300.

Those on both sides of the issues believe the vote in November has major implications for the future of their communities.

"I am not accusing dispensaries of selling to kids, but the thing about marijuana is there's no control over it," Berthoud resident Dwayne White said. "These kids deserve to have a safe childhood."

Safety

A concern for youth is precisely what drove White and other citizens to circulate a petition to let voters decide the medical marijuana dispensary issue. That petition, which gathered more than double the required signatures, came on the heels of a report released by the Berthoud Police Department, which many viewed as eye opening.

The report examined crime in the town before Herb's Medicinals' 2009 opening to April 2012. There had been other dispensaries in Berthoud but Herb's is now alone, and since Oct. 1, operating in a new location zoned by the town specifically for dispensaries. Because of the zoning regulations and the Herb's current location in that zone, another dispensary will not be able to open in the town.

According to Berthoud Police, there has been a 57 percent increase in total cases involving marijuana since Herb's Medicinals opened, including a 94 percent increase in juvenile marijuana reports.

"Since the dispensaries have opened, we have had an increase in the amount of students we've contacted who have marijuana in their possession," Berthoud Police Chief Glenn Johnson said.

Michele Ballinger, who owns Herb's Medicinals with her husband Kevin, vehemently denies that her dispensary is responsible for those increases. Anyone who wants to purchase Herb's Medicinals products is doing so above street price and must not only have a medical marijuana license but must sign a contract with the shop that stipulates the products may not be resold or used by anyone other than the licensee.

"I wouldn't put patients at risk to sell out the backdoor," Ballinger said.

Medicinal marijuana from Herb's comes in a company bag that includes a barcode traceable to that patient. If police confiscate a Herb's Medicinal product or a product is found to be in possession of someone who is not licensed to have it, they are banned from the shop.

And according to Johnson, most of the marijuana that's confiscated by police in Berthoud is not in Herb's Medicinals packaging.

White said he does believe Ballinger only sells to licensed users but what he's concerned about is the potential to purchase from shops all over the region. There is no system currently in place to regulate that.

"At the end of the day, you can have two pounds of marijuana because nobody is tracking those purchases," White said. "I don't have proof but I'm sure that's how it's getting out to the kids."

Crime

Since 21 Fort Collins medical marijuana dispensaries shut down last year, crime in Larimer County has not decreased. In fact, drugs/narcotics violations reported by the Larimer County Sheriff's Office through their online crime mapping system, Raids Online, have increased slightly. There were 90 violations from January to October in 2011 and 116 reported this year over the same time period.

What's on the ballot?

Amendment 64: All Colorado voters will vote on this measure to amend the Colorado Constitution. If approved, Amendment 64 would regulate the growth, manufacture and sale of marijuana in a system of licensed establishments. People 21 years old or older would be able to possess, use, transport and transfer one ounce or less of marijuana and up to six marijuana plants. The State Legislature would be required to enact an excise tax on marijuana sales that would be approved by a separate statewide vote.

Question 300, Berthoud: If approved, medical marijuana centers, optional premises cultivation operations and medical marijuana infused products manufacturing businesses would be prohibited in the town of Berthoud. Such businesses would have 90 days to cease operations.

Question 301, Fort Collins: If approved, this would repeal an ordinance of the city code that currently prohibits the operation of medical marijuana businesses in the city. That ordinance would be replaced with rules and regulations governing the licensing, number, location and operation of medical marijuana businesses.

Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith expects that it will take some time for drug crimes to drop.

"When you talk to kids and say that it's a medicine, the message has already been placed," Smith said. "It's hard to put a genie back in the bottle."

He refutes a common claim made by those who worked to get Question 301 onto the ballot, which is that cities are far safer with dispensaries than without them.

"All the black market guys were thrilled when this happened," said Adam Titelbaum, who is a former Fort Collins dispensary owner and spokesman for the issue committee Citizens for a Safer Neighborhood.

One area of crime that has decreased since the dispensaries closed is the violent robbery type of crime, Smith said. There were home invasions and break-ins to dispensaries in which marijuana theft was the goal. Herb's Medicinals in Berthoud has fallen victim to a break-in as well.

"When dispensaries first opened we saw robberies and home invasions like we've never had before," Smith said.

To Smith, the proof of misuse of medical marijuana is in the numbers of people in the county who are registered by the state to use it. In a year and a half without dispensaries in Fort Collins, registered users have dropped from about 8,500 to about 5,000. The number started out around 500 registered users in Larimer County in 2009, which Smith thinks is a more accurate representation of those who treat medical conditions with marijuana.

In Berthoud, a community of just more than 5,000 people, Ballinger said she has 350 primary patients, meaning those whose plants are grown for them, and 240 people in Berthoud have a license.

"I believe that the constitutional amendment here in Colorado was approved for people who need medical marijuana," Chief Johnson said. "My belief is it's way overdone by people who don't need it but can get it. When people get it there is that opportunity for young people to get a hold of it too."

Health

What if, as is White's greatest fear, marijuana does get into the hands of young people in the community? Besides being a legal risk, studies have shown the drug to have negative long-term psychological and cognitive effects on adolescents.

In a report published this year out of New Zealand, teens who started smoking pot before age 18 experienced an IQ drop in early adulthood.

"Seventeen percent of users become addicted before they reach 18," Dr. Adam Bursteim of the University of Colorado Denver said. "This has to do with the availability and access itself."

Other professionals, including Harvard trained researcher and physician Dr. Alan Shackelford, who attended a public forum sponsored by Ballinger and the Better Berthoud campaign in September, believe there are far greater threats to young people.

"The source of most drugs of abuse are in the medicine cabinet at home," he said.

Studies from universities and institutions across the nation have pointed to health benefits for adults with ailments including multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma and more.

A 2007 study from Harvard University concluded that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.

According to the state Department of Public Health and Environment, more than 900 physicians have signed for current patients in Colorado.

Bonnie Jean Bible, a 61-year-old Herb's Medicinals patient, worked as a nurse in Texas for 40 years. On an oncology unit in particular, Bible said she witnessed first-hand the horrors of untreatable nausea and pain that were unaffected or made worse by conventional medicine.

"Looking back, I think about how much those people suffered and I imposed that stuff on them," Bible said.

"I'm still trying to run my life as if it was normal," Wood said. "People don't understand how much this helps."

Williams, the Lou Gehrig's patient, does not only believe that medical marijuana helps him in his daily life but he believes it's prolonged his life. In the year or so that he's been a patient at Herb's Medicinals, he's gained six pounds on his frail frame.

"I truly believe a chemical in the cannabis is doing something to keep me alive," he said. "I'm not supposed to gain weight, I'm supposed to lose it."

While White advocates for synthetic marijuana, he said it's important to remember that people who feel they need marijuana for medicinal purposes will still have access to it.

"They can still get marijuana from a caregiver," he said.

Williams has been to caregivers in the past. He said they do not spend hours at a time with him like Herb's staff does, listening while he describes him symptoms and then offering suggestions on what might work best, offering a variety of balms, ointments and sprays.

Ballinger, who stands to lose at least $400,000 if her business closes, along with her job, her husband's job and four full-time employees, said she doesn't want Question 300 to pass because of Williams and a hundred other patients like him.

"If we were to close I would not give up," she said. "I would find another way to help these people."

Justin Bartkowski, an employee at Herb's Medicinals, a medical marijuana dispensary in Berthoud, arranges different kinds of medical marijuana recently after moving into the dispensary's new location in the small community.
(
Jenny Sparks
)

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